Views of Hans Joachim Schellnuber

Take unprecedented action or bear the consequences, says eminent scientist and advisor. David Spratt and Ian Dunlop, Climate Code Red. Aug. 20, 2018.

“Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action, or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences.” 

Those are the challenging words from Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, for twenty years the head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and a senior advisor to Pope Francis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Union. In the foreword to a new report, Schellnhuber says the issue now "is the very survival of our civilisation, where conventional means of analysis may become useless”.

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Schellnhuber argues that calculating probabilities makes little sense in the most critical instances, such as the methane-release dynamics in thawing permafrost areas or the potential failing of entire states in the climate crisis. Rather, he says, we should “identify possibilities, that is, potential developments in the planetary make-up that are consistent with the initial and boundary conditions, the processes and the drivers we know.” 

This calls for a new approach, with less emphasis on climate models in endless runs, and a new focus on such methods as scenario planning, where the consequences of a number of future possibilities, including those which may seem highly unlikely, but have major consequences, are evaluated. This way, he says, "one can overcome the probability obsession that not only fantasizes about the replicability of the singular, but also favours the familiar over the unknown and unexpected".

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Schellnhuber concludes that it is “all the more important to listen to non-mainstream voices who do understand the issues and are less hesitant to cry wolf. Unfortunately for us, the wolf may already be in the house."